


One Two Three

by Neyiea



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Identity Issues, Love at First Sight, M/M, Marijuana, POV Alternating, Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27701389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: “I think my brother’s got a crush on you.”Bruce really wishes that he didn’t have any idea of how Jerome’stwin brothermight have started developing a bit of a thing for him, but in reality he knows exactly why this is happening, and it’s his own damn fault.
Relationships: Jeremiah Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Jeremiah Valeska/Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 35
Kudos: 157





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a background project for me for a _very_ long time now, and while doing a little read-over of my unedited chapters I figured, 'hey, actually this ends kind of nicely where it is, let's just edit and post it' because otherwise none of this is ever going online and I have, like, almost forty pages of J/B/J where no one dies or is threatened and Bruce really needs that, I put him through so much grief.
> 
> Also maybe if I post this now I can utilize comments to gain motivation for the other J/B/J fic that I really ought to be finishing up. Ha. Ingenuity. 
> 
> Okay that's it from me; as always, enjoy.

“I think my brother’s got a crush on you.”

Bruce briefly pauses in the act of taking the smouldering joint from Jerome’s outstretched hand, and he makes what he hopes is an appropriately noncommittal sound before bringing it to his own lips.

On the inside he might, possibly, be panicking.

“I’ve noticed a few glances being thrown in your direction that have been tinged with—let’s call it _longing._ ” Jerome chortles in amusement. Bruce fights the urge to start squirming as Jerome turns to face him, smile far too wide for the expression to be comforting. “I half expect him to be writing ‘Mister Jeremiah Wayne’ in one of his notebooks.”

Smoke rushes out of Bruce’s mouth in a startled cough. His cheeks feel like they’re burning.

He is not in any way prepared for a conversation like this. 

Fuck, this is what he gets for being the sort of idiot who makes friends with and then gets a crush on the guy who sells him weed. He really wishes that he didn’t have any idea of how Jerome’s _twin brother_ might have started developing a bit of a thing for him, but in reality he knows exactly why this is happening, and it’s his own damn fault.

“You’re telling me this why?” His tone is suitably even, at least. He hopes Jerome doesn’t plan on talking about Jeremiah for too much longer though, or else Bruce is going to die of embarrassment. 

Please don’t be trying to set me up with him, he thinks fervently. I’ve liked you for months. Please don’t be trying to play matchmaker between me and your brother. 

“He’s never shown interest in anyone before, is all I’m saying.” Jerome plucks the joint from Bruce’s fingers, bringing it back up to his own mouth smoothly. “He’s a neurotic type, too. Before you know it he may become a full blown stalker,” he voices it like a joke so Bruce takes it as one. Still. Fuck his poor life choices.

“I just wonder what happened to get him so hooked up on you.” Jerome scans him intently from the corner of his eye, then smirks. “Not that you’re not an absolute catch, Brucie, but it’s really fucking weird to think of Miah being interested in anything beyond his damn labyrinths and blueprints. I feel like I might have missed out on something that first time you ran into each other.” He blows smoke into the air, just as composed as the first time Bruce had crossed paths with him—when he’d been so stressed and angry and wanted to do something in an act of teenaged rebellion—and his eyes are just as calculating as when Bruce had offered him what was, in retrospect, a ridiculous amount of cash for a couple of puffs from the little pipe that he’d been smoking from at the time. 

“I guess we’ll never know,” Bruce says in return.

Because he has no plans to let Jerome in on that mess.

The thing about being a Wayne—also known as being rich enough to buy whatever he wants and get away with pretty much anything in Gotham—is that he’s been surrounded by a lot of falsely friendly people over the years. It had started to get too much to bear years ago and he’d attempted, really, to communicate the way it made his skin crawl, but somehow that didn’t stop his parents from dragging him to every little party and gala and charity event that they were going to. 

He was a Wayne. There were responsibilities tied to his name. He was expected to smile and carry on like a proper modern-day aristocrat. 

So he had eventually, as his mother tended to put it—during one terrible night where he’d been expected to make nice with Tommy Elliot; who’d made Bruce’s elementary school years an absolute hell, had faithfully continued the trend for their first three years of high school, and would no doubt maintain his status as an absolute bastard during their final year—‘run away’.

Just down a few city blocks. Hardly a significant distance. There really was no need for his mother to have the police issue an amber alert on him when he’d only been gone for a little more than a few hours.

That was when he’d met him; Jerome. Bruce hadn’t noticed his appearance so much as the smell of him, at first. Not in a bad way, just in a _knowing_ way. As sheltered as his parents might like to keep him, he knew what marijuana smelt like.

And he’d felt in the mood to do something drastic. 

So he’d approached the young man with the wild red hair and the beat-up leather jacket, and had offered him a few too-crisp bill for a couple of puffs.

Jerome had scanned him over, lips twitching as if he was at least attempting to hold back his strange—and in retrospect definitely unkind—smile. He had eventually accepted the money, though, had talked Bruce through how to breathe in the smoke, and had laughed—and again, in retrospect it had not been a kind laugh, not at all—when Bruce had coughed until he was red in the face from his first hit.

“You done?” He’d asked.

“No.” Bruce had responded stubbornly.

The cruel twist of his lips has lessened, just a little. “Don’t blame me if this triggers an asthma attack, kid.” And he’d held his lighter to the bowl a second time. 

That was the start of it all, really. Jerome must have realized right away that Bruce came from money, he’d have to be an idiot not to, but he hadn’t treated Bruce the way that Bruce was used to being treated. A little mean, but not the same way that Tommy and his awful friends were mean. Harsh, maybe, was a better word for it. He wasn’t interested in bending over backwards for anyone, least of all some rich teenager who looked like he’d gotten lost on the way to the sort of party that served champagne to minors. 

And when Bruce had begun to relax—and he’d never even realized how much tension he carried, for him to be able to relax so much without turning into an actual puddle—he’d known that he wanted two things.

One: to see Jerome again, because he seemed interesting, and weird, and so different from the people who Bruce was used to being forced to associate with. 

Two: he wanted to smoke again.

So he’d made a little deal with Jerome to meet up with him the next week, with the stipulation that Jerome would smoke with him—he’d hoped that he had passed it off as a rich teenager’s eccentricity and not loneliness—and Jerome had actually come through. Probably because Bruce had offered even more money, since it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford to be over-charged and he wanted to make sure that Jerome had felt properly compensated for his time.

Once a week they’d meet up for an hour or two, and Jerome would either bring his pipe or would deftly roll cigarette paper between his long fingers, and over the course of the summer Bruce started noticing more and more little things about him. The sharpness of his gaze, the occasionally vicious curve of his smile, the bruises on his knuckles as if he’d been in a fight, the way he’d sometimes toy with a switchblade after he’d finished smoking…

Almost everything about Jerome screamed ‘dangerous’.

Bruce’s heart would beat a little faster in his chest. It wasn’t because he was afraid. 

They’d talk. Not about very important things, at least not at first—once Bruce got high he tended to be far less reserved than he usually was, and subjects which he would never speak about to his parents or his peers or ex-girlfriends were suddenly not completely off-limits—but they’d slowly begun to open up to each other. It had been nice.

Bruce had a crush by the time school started back up.

With the promise of steadily dropping temperatures, and the knowledge that the autumn rain in Gotham stung terribly, Jerome had invited Bruce to his place so that they didn’t freeze outside. He had told him where the spare keys were—because, he’d laughingly stated, he was pretty sure he could trust Bruce not to steal anything—and had said to come right in just in case Jerome hadn’t made it back from university yet, and to make himself at home on the couch in the living room.

And Bruce had thought that this was his chance.

He’d thought: I’ll make the first move. Jerome will find it surprising. His smile is really nice whenever I surprise him. Plus, there must be a reason why he’s inviting me to his place. There’s got to be more behind it than escaping the cold when we still have a month or two of warm weather ahead of us. 

But he was nervous, you see, and keyed up.

And Jerome, the ass, had never said that the brother he sometimes mentioned was a _twin brother_ , and definitely hadn’t mentioned that they _lived together_.

Maybe Bruce had missed a few key clues—because admittedly Jeremiah dressed nothing like Jerome—but he’d thought that maybe he tried to look less like an anarchist when he was in class, and maybe he wore contacts when he was with Bruce.

And so Bruce, in all of his teenaged wisdom and desire to make out, had only taken the time to perceive red hair and the right bone structure before using the element of surprise to pin _not-Jerome_ to the wall and slide their lips together.

And that kiss…

Bruce had wanted to keep it chaste, because he liked Jerome and Jerome deserved soft and sweet things occasionally, but he’d also never kissed a guy before and was really eager to make a good impression. So maybe he’d bitten a full bottom lip, and maybe he’d laced their fingers together—because he was a romantic at heart, okay?—and maybe he’d swiped his tongue against those lips and had shuddered when he felt them part, and maybe he’d been a little swept away when those deft fingers finally interlaced with his…

And maybe he’d gotten half-hard before he’d pulled away, flushed and smiling and so fucking pleased that he’d been kissed back, and he’d seen the wide eyes and the pink cheeks and the red mouth and…

Something even more not-quite-right than the clothes, and the hair, and the glasses. 

“You… Where have all of your freckles gone?”

There were a few. But not enough.

“What?” Not-Jerome, later to be known as Jeremiah, had croaked. “I—I’m sorry, who are you?”

It had felt like the floor was crumbling underneath Bruce’s feet. He’d wanted to go hide in a hole and never come out again, but his manners and upbringing demanded that he not just run away from his problems. So instead he had apologized to Jeremiah profusely, trying to explain the situation in a way that didn’t sound like he was trying to exchange sex for drugs and pleading with him to never, never, _never_ tell anyone what had happened. 

Jeremiah, obviously kinder than his brother, had agreed while very carefully not looking in Bruce’s direction.

Bruce hasn’t run into him a lot since then, even though he’s over at their place once a week and he knows that Jeremiah gets out of class the same time as Jerome. He’d thought that Jeremiah had been keeping his distance because Bruce had, you know, assaulted him in his own home and had made him feel incredibly uncomfortable.

But, with Jerome eyeing him up like he’s planning on bringing Bruce’s most terrible secret to the surface, he’s worried that maybe that isn’t the case. Jerome knows Jeremiah better than Bruce, and if he thinks that Jeremiah has been getting a crush on Bruce then he’s probably right.

Fuck. Seriously, fuck.

Because now that Jerome’s mentioned it…

Jeremiah is kind of…

Well. Bruce has thought about their kiss a lot. Even though he tends to feel bad about it afterwards due to the unfortunate circumstances behind it. And even though Jeremiah and Jerome are not at all alike, he’s got a few traits that Bruce has—distantly, without putting too much thought into it, because Bruce liked Jerome—internally admitted might be attractive. 

But Bruce could not afford to get another crush, on the twin brother of his first male crush no less. How fickle of him would that be?

He cannot.

He will not. 

To switch his attention fully onto Jeremiah just because he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with Jerome would be unfair. Unkind. Ungentlemanly. 

And then, as if destiny is intent on screwing him over, Jeremiah walks past the living room. His lips purse slightly, because he’s not a huge fan of any smoke even if the foundation of the house started reeking of cigarettes years before he and Jerome had begun to rent the property, but then his eyes land on Bruce and—

Longing was a very tame word for what his expression conveys for the split second before he realizes that Bruce is looking back at him. Then his eyes dart away, and his cheeks go pink, and Bruce could almost forget that brief flash of something wild.

Maybe Jerome and Jeremiah were actually more alike than he’d thought they were.

Jerome winds and arm over his shoulders and pulls him a little closer. Bruce tries not to make a complete fool of himself—usually he feels relaxed by now, but this conversation is making him edgy; even more uptight than usual, Jerome might say—and Jeremiah’s hands twist restlessly at his sides before he mumbles a greeting and walks away.

“See?” Jerome snickers. “Totally got a crush on you. He’s so jealous right now that I bet he’s considering smothering me with a pillow in my sleep,” Jerome whispers, his lips brushing against Bruce’s ear. “He’s so used to getting what he wants. It’s hilarious to see him try and keep his composure. He doesn’t want me to realize what’s going on.” His lips press against Bruce’s neck. Bruce isn’t sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but he is pretty sure that his heart is about to beat right out of his chest, regardless.

“All things considered, though, he’s been a lot more bearable since you started coming around.” Teeth skim against the skin his lips had brushed. Definitely not a coincidence. “I guess, as long as he remembers that you were mine first, I don’t mind sharing.”

“Yours?” Bruce manages to stutter out.

_Sharing_ , he mentally echoes in alarm.

Jerome chuckles lowly, and Bruce can’t hold back a shudder.

“Did you think you were being subtle, Brucie? Of course you’re mine.”

x-x-x

It takes Jerome a while to realize that the teenager he spends his Tuesdays hanging around and smoking with has got a bit of a thing for him. It’s strange, because Bruce doesn’t seem the type to be interested in any of what Jerome has to offer, so he ignores it and assumes that the appeal will fade after Bruce gets to know him a little better.

It doesn’t.

And Jerome had maybe gotten a little fond of Bruce over the course of the summer. He’s not nearly as annoying as he could be, for a start. He’s stubborn, but in a weirdly endearing sort of way, and he’s really unintentionally funny at times. Frankly, it wouldn’t be a chore to keep their arrangement up for another few years—which would be long enough for Jerome to deal with a substantial percentage of his student loans courtesy of his unexpected source of income which involved very little time and effort. 

Plus, Bruce is cute. He’s not the sort of bombshell that Jerome generally goes for, but he’s got nice eyes, a nice voice, soft looking hands and even softer looking hair. The type of person so out of Jerome’s league that it’s nothing short of a miracle that they even met. 

So maybe he invites Bruce over to his place once his classes start back up, and maybe it isn’t entirely out of altruism. Maybe it’s because he wants to toy with Bruce a little and see how far he can go before Bruce realizes that he’s not as good at hiding his emotions as he thinks he is. Maybe it’s because he does plan to, eventually and after much teasing, make Bruce see stars as Jerome finally gives him what he’s obviously been dreaming of. 

And maybe he starts feeling a little soft a few weeks in, when in response to a text complaining about bills and fees and their grocery money being halved for the next week Bruce shows up on Tuesday with way too much take-out and a simple, blandly spoken explanation of “I’m hungry” even though he hardly puts a dent in it and doesn’t take any home with him when they’re done. Jerome wouldn’t be able to stand obvious charity like bags of groceries, and at that point he would have felt bad about Bruce giving him even more cash when Jerome was already steeply overcharging him for every single thing, but…

Bruce was sweet. Nice. Thoughtful. 

Maybe Jerome starts to like Bruce more than he did before, more than he thought he would. 

His plans, however, are put on a momentary hold when he notices Jeremiah’s interest in Bruce.

He doesn’t hate Jeremiah. Was jealous of him growing up, sure; because he unfailingly seemed to become everyone’s favourite even though his social skills were absolute shit. And he did better in school. And people were always singing his praises. And then he’d gotten a full fucking scholarship for his dream program—

Whatever. They’re brothers. Jerome is allowed to not like him all of the time.

Getting back to the point; Jeremiah has _never_ shown interest in a person before. Jerome is pretty sure that _he’s_ the closest thing to a best friend that Jeremiah has, which is kind of pathetic, really, until he remembers that Jeremiah is the closest thing to a best friend that _he’s_ ever had. They were the only half-decent thing in each other’s lives for more than a decade, and even if they’d made other friends once they managed to go off on their own, they would never find anyone else who could understand them half as well as each other. Jerome has seen first-hand the way Jeremiah is around people; he’s never cared for others overly much, and he’s gotten close to even fewer people than Jerome has. Seeing him get all tongue-tied around Bruce is hilarious, and also kind of… Humanizing.

Plus his feelings have made him way less of an ass lately, though sometimes when Jerome leans a little too far into Bruce’s space specifically to make Bruce flush he can feel his skin prickling. 

It makes sense that Jeremiah would be as possessive as Jerome is. It’s in their blood. 

He’s been keeping his distance, though, as if he cares enough about Jerome to not butt in. Instead he just sends heated looks in Bruce’s direction whenever Bruce isn’t looking, and sighs to himself miserably every time that Bruce leaves.

Jerome almost can’t stand the melodrama. 

So one night after midterms, when even Jeremiah is willing to let loose enough to drink a little too much, he gets the answer to the question that he’s been curious about.

So yeah, he knows exactly why Jeremiah sometimes looks at Bruce like he wants to make Bruce fall apart under his hands, and he knows exactly why Bruce gets so twitchy whenever he mentions Jeremiah. 

And he knows exactly what he wants to do.

Miah is his baby bro, and even if he has a lot more going for him he’d still had the same utterly fucked up childhood as Jerome. He deserves a little bit of happiness, just like Jerome deserves a little bit of happiness. He deserves to have someone around who’ll make him a better person, or rather, make him less of narcissist. 

But Jerome isn’t nice enough to let him have what he wants too easily.

Bruce was his, first. It was a fluke that Jeremiah had gotten to kiss him before Jerome, and frankly Jeremiah would never even have met Bruce if not for Jerome, so there, ha.

Jeremiah got the first kiss. Jerome’s going to unabashedly take other firsts.

Right now. 

“Did you think you were being subtle, Brucie? Of course you’re mine.”

He presses another kiss to Bruce’s neck, reveling in the way Bruce tilts his head to give him more room. This is going to be so fun. He bets it’ll take nothing to get Bruce worked up; it wasn’t that long ago that Jerome was Bruce’s age and he remembers what his crushes were like. Plus, the poor guy has probably been wanting this to happen for months.

“And if you want to be just mine, that’s alright.” He shifts so that he can face Bruce, then slowly presses him back against the arm of the couch. “I’d love to have you all to myself, darlin’, but I can’t help but wonder if you’d like a little more.”

“More?” Bruce’s voice raises in pitch. God, he’s so fucking cute. Jerome wants to wreck him.

“Yeah.” He lays his hands on Bruce’s hips, moving so that he’s kneeling over top of him. Bruce’s eyes are wide, and his breathing has already been reduced to short little pants. Jerome wonders what will happen once he finally slides their lips together. He wonders how many kisses Bruce has taken part in—the one with Miah, and a few with the past girlfriends that he only mentioned when he was thoroughly loosened up. He wonders if Bruce has done anything more than kissing. 

“See, I’ve gotten kind of good at reading you, Bruce. When Miah passed by just now? He wasn’t the only one whose reaction I was looking at.”

“But… But I like you,” Bruce finally admits to him, flushing darker. The tips of his ears actually go pink. “I like you a lot.”

Adorable.

“And I like you too.” Jerome settles his weight against Bruce and leans down so that they’re face to face. “A lot.”

“So why—”

“Shh. We can worry about that later.” Jerome licks his lips, his tongue lightly brushing against Bruce’s mouth. Bruce jerks and shudders underneath him, and Jerome can feel Bruce getting hard in his slacks. “Because right now? You’re mine, and only mine.”

Bruce makes a strangled sound, but he doesn’t try to dispute it.

This is going to be so worth the wait.

x-x-x

Jeremiah opens the cupboard and sighs, not just at the evidence that Jerome’s latest grocery trip had once again resulted in several boxes of cereal composed mostly of mini marshmallows, but at his own undeniable habit of making his way past the living room into the kitchen every time that Bruce was over not because he was hungry, but because he liked to throw a few covert glances Bruce’s way and he could not seem to stop.

He remembers the first day they’d met, two months ago. He’d been irate at Jerome passively mentioning that he’d invited someone that Jeremiah didn’t know into their home, because Jeremiah has seen some of the people Jerome chooses to hang out with on campus and frankly he’d rather they not have access to the already ramshackle place that they’d decided on renting together to further cut down on costs. His scholarship easily covered his tuition and textbooks, but there wasn’t enough left over for him to splurge on good housing, not if he wanted to graduate without too much debt hanging over his head. Jeremiah was going to make something of himself, was going to take the world by storm, and if reaching that goal as soon as possible meant several years of renting a rundown house with his brother, then he’d manage.

It wasn’t much; the smell of cigarette smoke always lingered, and the floors were uneven, and you had to run the water in the shower for a full minute before it was anything other than glacial, but it was his, and he didn’t like the idea of strangers in his space. 

He’d come home and had, with a completely normal amount of paranoia for someone living in Gotham, checked where the spare keys were kept and noticed that they weren’t laying in the exact same spot that they had been that morning, when Jeremiah had checked them before heading to the campus.

The fact that someone who he didn’t know was inside, without even Jerome to watch over them, and was doing who knew what—

He’d been prepared to feel distaste or anger as he stepped in and saw them. He’d thought of the worst-case scenario—finding this stranger going through his things and having to kick them out, Jerome’s friend or not—

He hadn’t been prepared for being pushed up against a wall by someone.

He hadn’t been prepared for lips that were soft and warm and nothing short of heavenly to slide over his own. The surprise was enough to make him pause, wide-eyed and staring at a face that was too close to make out any details other than the thick, dark lashes of their closed eyes. 

The mystery stranger had bitten his lip, and had laced their fingers together, and Jeremiah had quickly gotten lost in the new and wonderful world of kissing. Hot and wet, slick and sweet. He’d reciprocated every graze of lips, every slide of tongue, and when the stranger had finally stepped back far enough that Jeremiah could see them, they were—

Beautiful. The most beautiful being who had ever walked the earth, surely.

Jeremiah was sure that his thundering heart had skipped a beat.

And then, because soulmates and true love’s first kiss were fairy tales, it became all too apparent that the stranger, Bruce, had somehow mistaken Jeremiah for Jerome. 

And maybe he’d been jealous, because Jerome had always been _better_ with people than Jeremiah, and for him to have somehow wormed his way into the heart of this well-spoken, gorgeous, absolute darling of a person was another sign that what Jeremiah lacked Jerome had in spades.

But he’d caught a glimpse of them together later, sitting on the worn-out couch in the living room, and had seen how some of Jerome’s sharper edges seemed to soften the longer Bruce sat with him, and Jeremiah…

Jeremiah has a lot of conflicting feelings about most of his family but he knows that, despite their many differences, Jerome has always been on his side. It had always been them against the world. He’s happy that Jerome has found someone who he can let his guard down around.

That unfortunately doesn’t stop Jeremiah from mooning over Bruce or occasionally—or all the time—wishing that he was the one that Bruce was curled up against. The one that Bruce wanted to kiss. He’d be gentle. He’d be good. He’d learn and remember all the things that Bruce liked the most. He’d map out Bruce’s body and memorize every dip and curve and angle and plane of him, with his hands and his teeth and his lips and his tongue. 

He’d do almost anything to make Bruce look at him the way he had when he’d thought that he was Jerome. So happy and flushed that he was almost _glowing._

He tries not to get too close very often because the simultaneous flares of envy and desire are occasionally enough to leave him reeling, but Bruce has an undeniable magnetism to him, and Jeremiah is weak against the pull of feelings that he’d never had before. 

A university student with his first crush; how quaint. 

He sighs and pours himself a bowl of cereal. He makes a mental note to take the time to do the grocery shopping this week, because if he leaves it up to Jerome again he’s half-certain that the only options open to him will be breakfast foods and snacks. He lingers in the kitchen a little bit longer, working up the nerve to walk past Jerome and Bruce a second time within the span of a few minutes. He doesn’t have to look, except that he totally does, because the one day a week that Bruce is here is the one day a week that Jeremiah absolutely cannot control himself.

He wishes it were Tuesday every day.

He wishes a lot of things. 

He steels himself and makes his way out of the kitchen, down the hall, walking past the opening to the living room. He casts a quick glance inside to tide himself over until his next trip into the kitchen, and he—

Freezes.

Actually stops mid-step. Stops breathing too, for a moment. He shouldn’t look. He should walk away, but he—

He can’t.

Bruce is laid out on the couch underneath Jerome, his hands digging into Jerome’s hair. They’re kissing; the sort of open-mouthed, hungry kisses that Jeremiah has fantasized about when he knows he’s alone in the house. It’s mostly quiet, except for the muted sound of their wet lips, at least until Jerome braces his hands on either side of Bruce’s head and grinds their pelvises together.

Bruce’s hips hitch, a needy sound—a sound that Jeremiah is never going to be able to forget, not that he’d ever want to—falling from his pink, open mouth.

Jeremiah’s blood is pooling, low and hot in his belly, and it’s only the knowledge of how mortifying it will be to get caught watching that finally uproots him from his spot. He darts past, quick and silent, too focused on getting away to notice the sharp hazel eyes that seek him out. 

He makes it to his room and shuts his door, bracing his back against it as if he expects someone is going to try and follow him inside when all he needs right now is to be alone with his frantic thoughts.

What would it be like to be the one pushing Bruce down, settling between his legs, kissing him like they had all the time in the world, wringing sweet noises from him?

His own kiss with Bruce is enough of a starting point, and his mind eagerly fills in the other gaps. 

He sets the bowl of cereal aside and, back still braced against the door, drops a hand down to his pants.


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce’s eyes flutter open, confused as to why Jerome has pulled away when what he really should be doing is kissing more and touching more. His hips make an aborted motion, unable to rock up with Jerome’s hands bracketing them so tightly, and then—

Jerome is kissing him again, even harder than before, and Bruce doesn’t think he could ever get enough of it. His hands clench tightly in Jerome’s hair and there’s a half a second where he feels bad about it, where he thinks he ought to let go and apologize, but then Jerome sighs against his mouth and kisses him deeper and grinds against him and if anything Bruce’s grip becomes even tighter in response.

Bruce can feel Jerome’s cock against his hip. Jerome’s thigh has settled firmly between his legs. Jerome is kissing him like he’s wanted to do this for just as long as Bruce has, and he can’t bring himself to let go.

He doesn’t think he’d be articulate enough to apologize for the roughness, anyways. And not only because he’d been smoking. 

Something slick slides against his lips, and Bruce’s entirely body pulses with the realization that it’s Jerome’s tongue as he opens his mouth again. 

Everything is hot and wet. It’s so good. Bruce hadn’t realized that he could feel this good while kissing, not even after his lip-lock with Jeremiah which had been his most thrilling kiss to date—the months of wishing and anticipation had made the slightest slide of that mouth against his own feel breathtakingly significant—for those few moments before reality had come crashing in and it had become the most mortifying. 

Of course, he and Jeremiah hadn’t been grinding against each other, too. 

There’s a flash of an idea—a wondering of what it would be like to have two sets of hands on him, to have two wet mouths demanding his attention, to have two of everything focused on him and pressed against him—and the feeling that floods through him at the thought makes a soft, breathy sound escape from his mouth.

Jerome moves back and hums, looking over Bruce’s burning face with half-lidded eyes. He moves his thigh, slow and purposeful, and Bruce desperately tries to buck his hips against it as Jerome’s hands continue to keep him mostly in place. His movements are more sluggish than they would be if he were sober, and he hopes that the next time they do this he can experience it without anything in his system holding him back from doing exactly what he wants. If he didn’t feel so lax he might manage to move and act a little more provocatively.

“Look at you,” Jerome breathes lowly. His breath smells of smoke and his pupils are blown and in this moment Bruce would do absolutely anything that he asked. “You’re even cuter than I thought you would be.”

“Have you thought about what I would look like a lot?” Bruce rasps with no small amount of difficulty. Jerome continues to move his thigh against him and Bruce can’t keep still. He jerks and shudders and squirms, and through it all Jerome watches him like a hawk. 

Jerome smiles, the sharp flash of teeth and the glint of his eyes makes Bruce feel like he might melt. He lifts one hand to cup the side of Bruce’s hot face, and his thumb glides along the seam of Bruce’s wet, swollen lips. His smile widens further when Bruce’s mouth falls open, and as he presses the pad of his thumb onto his tongue Bruce wonders—dizzy and aching—what it would be like to suck his cock.

The heat within him reaches a whole new level, and he can feel the front of his underwear start to become damp.

“I have,” Jerome answers with a roughness to his voice that Bruce has never heard before. Maybe because Bruce has wrapped his lips around his thumb and started to suck. Maybe because he wants this just as much as Bruce wants it, and Bruce affects him just as much as he affects Bruce. “I’ve thought about kissing you. I’ve thought about what it would be like to breathe smoke into your mouth instead of passing you a joint. I’ve wondered if you’d shy away from or if you’d accept everything I want to give you.” He leans in, resting their foreheads together. “I’ve wondered what would have happened if it had been me that you kissed instead of Jeremiah, because, my brave darlin’,” he drawls, sliding his thumb out of Bruce’s mouth with a wet pop. “If you gave me such a sweet surprise, I would pay you back right away.”

Bruce’s heart jolts. He feels feverish. His legs tremble on either side of Jerome’s thigh.

“How?”

Jerome’s other hand comes to stroke against Bruce’s cheek. His soft laughter brushes against Bruce’s mouth, and it makes Bruce hungry for more of his kisses. His leg presses, presses, presses, and Bruce can’t stop himself from moving against it no matter how crude it is. 

Is this why other students made out in hallways without caring who might see? Because once they started they couldn’t seem to stop?

“I’d kiss your mouth and along your throat, and I’d scrape my teeth down your chest and stomach, and then I’d get on my knees for you.”

Bruce jerks and whimpers, toes curling.

“Fuck, I’d take such good care of you. You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off me. I wouldn’t want you to.” He lets out a low, rumbling laugh, and slowly drags his pelvis along Bruce’s hip. Bruce can feel how hard he is, and it makes him almost dizzy. His breathing turns to soft, shallow gasps, his wide eyes don’t dare look away from Jerome’s face. “Any of your girlfriends ever suck you off?”

“No,” Bruce croaks. The furthest he’d ever gone with them had been fumbling touches above clothes—accompanied by nervous laughter and soft kisses which were very dear memories but were candles in the wake of the fire that Jerome was currently igniting inside of him. “They never—I never—”

“Shh, it’s okay baby. I’d love to be your first.” Jerome shifts, settling fully between Bruce’s legs, and he braces his hands on either side of Bruce before he starts rocking against him. “We could do it right here.”

“Here,” Bruce squeaks. “But Jeremiah—oh, oh fuck—Jeremiah could walk by any second—”

“He’s not going to see any more. Trust me.”

“Any—ahh—any more? Did he—Did he see something?!”

“Just a bit of kissing.”

Bruce somehow feels himself go even hotter. Jerome makes a contemplative noise in response to whatever expression he sees on Bruce’s face, and grinds against Bruce hard enough that his entire body shivers.

Holy shit. Bruce can feel Jerome’s cock against his. Holy fuck.

“I’d get on my knees for you in front of this couch,” Jerome tells him. “Tease you a little first, because you’re too cute not to tease. Give you a few hickies on the insides of your thighs, let myself get comfortable between your legs.” He chuckles, the movement of his hips a firm, unyielding pressure. Bruce’s legs lock around him, and his hands scrabble against his shoulders. He’s definitely making a lot of embarrassing noises under his breath, but Jerome seems to like it so maybe he shouldn’t worry too much about being provocative. Maybe Jerome finds him provocative enough as he is. “You ever fantasize about me going down on you?”

“Nn—no.” Fuck, he feels so good. 

“How far have we gone in your daydreams? Any further than what we’re doing now?” Jerome’s grin is sharp, and it makes Bruce feel fluttery.

“This—uhhh—this is about as far as I’ve imagined. I—I mostly thought about kissing you, and making out, and maybe—” Bruce curses, feeling breathless. His stomach muscles clench as he rolls his hips unsteadily. “Maybe touching your dick through those leather pants that you sometimes wear.” His legs squeeze as if he’s trying to keep Jerome right where he is, or maybe like they’re trying to close of their own volition because everything is becoming a little too much. His hot blood is pooling between the junction of his thighs and every movement of Jerome against him drives him closer to the brink. 

“I’ll let you touch it without anything in the way, darlin’. We could take our pants off right now. Would you like that Bruce? Feeling my cock right against you?”

Oh, fuck. Bruce thankfully manages to nod, because if he tries to talk right now all that’s going to come out is a whine.

“I’ll give you something nice to think about the next time you touch yourself.”

Jerome pushes down just as Bruce arcs his back to press more firmly against him. Something hot and sharp floods through him and Bruce’s entire body tenses, clamping around Jerome as tightly as he can. He trembles, soft wordless cries falling out of his open mouth, and Jerome goes completely still as Bruce comes in his pants. 

Bruce takes in one shaking breath. Then another. His arms and legs slowly start loosening up. He’s kind of mortified, but not nearly as much as he would be if he wasn’t high. He feels—

Fuck, he feels great. And exhausted. 

“Holy shit Bruce.” Jerome draws back, kneeling between Bruce’s splayed legs and staring down at him. His expression is a strange mix of awe and hunger. “You’re so sweet.” He runs his hands up and down Bruce’s legs. “The sounds you made, fuck.” He leans in to press a kiss to Bruce’s slack mouth. “Can’t wait to hear you make them again.”

“Jerome.” His limbs feel so heavy. Raising a hand isn’t usually this difficult even if he’s been smoking. He’s wrung right out; months of longing finally accumulating into an act that, even just remembering it, makes him feel pleasantly hazy. “I really like you.”

“Aw, Bruce.” Jerome grins and smacks another kiss against his cheek. “I really like you too.”

“Do you want—do you want me to—”

“You were spectacular, darlin’.” Jerome looks down at him, gaze hot in a way that would make Bruce squirm if he had the energy. “But you look like you’re going to pass out. We’ll save the reciprocation for another time when you’re a little more awake, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bruce sighs in happy agreement. And then, because he tends to over-share when he’s high and he’s way too relaxed to feel embarrassed by it, he adds, “I want to suck your cock.”

Jerome’s eyes shut and he breathes in, steady and deep, as if he’s fighting to retain some level of self-control. When he opens his eyes again the look on his face is intense enough that Bruce’s heart lurches in his chest. It makes him want to do something drastic. It makes him want to do something fun.

“Can I come over tomorrow?” Usually they only meet up once a week, but now that they’ve gotten even closer hopefully Bruce could use it as an excuse to see him more often. “Or the next day? Or the weekend? I—”

“You’re always welcome here, Brucie,” Jerome tells him as he runs a hand through Bruce’s hair. It feels nice, and Bruce feels his eyelids getting even heavier. “You know where we keep the spare key and everything. Tell you what; I have late classes the next two days, so how about Friday night? You can come here right after you’re done school, I shouldn’t be too long.” Jerome presses their foreheads together, but Bruce can tell he’s smirking even without seeing his mouth as he says, “Maybe Miah will be around to keep you company.”

Something hot twists inside of him.

He wonders what it would be like to kiss Jeremiah again and actually mean to do it this time.

He wonders how Jeremiah would react.

He wonders how Jerome would react if he found them together.

Bruce nods. “Friday,” he says. He’s gotten away with secretly meeting up with Jerome so routinely on a school night by telling his parents that he takes part in weekly group study sessions—easy enough since his grades backed-up the lie—but they’d probably accept an excuse of him going out with friends like a normal teenager on a Friday night, even if he hadn’t gone out on a Friday night since eleventh grade when he and Selina called it quits for good. 

He takes a moment to consider whether or not his parents are going to start thinking that he’s hiding a new girlfriend from them. He’ll deal with that as the problem arises. 

“Friday,” Jerome repeats with a grin that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle in the way that Bruce likes. “And, not to totally kill your buzz, but you are really going to hate taking your underwear off later if you let them dry out while you’re still in them.”

Bruce groans and Jerome, unsurprisingly, laughs at him.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he soothes. His fingers deftly undo the button and zipper of Bruce’s pants. “I’ll take ‘em off for you.”

“What am I supposed to do with them? Ball them up in my pocket to take them home?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bruce.” Jerome’s fingers hook into his beltloops and starts pulling. “Obviously I’m going to keep ‘em.”

“Oh.” Bruce lifts his hips, and watches Jerome’s face as Jerome stares avidly at the bared skin of his thighs. “What’ll you do with them?”

“I’ll tell you on Friday.” Jerome casts a glance up to his face and winks. “Now just lay back and let yourself relax. You’ve still got an hour or two until your parents expect you home, right? Take some time to unwind.”

“If I relax any more I’ll fall asleep.” His pants are gone. Jerome’s fingers dip into the hem of his underwear. “Is Jeremiah going to be mad that I got mostly naked on the couch?”

“Bruce, baby, Jeremiah wouldn’t care if you were fully naked on this couch as long as he was around to see it.”

Bruce thinks again of what it would be like to have both. Two people to run their fingers through his hair when he was feeling overwhelmed. Two people to talk to when he felt like he couldn’t talk to anyone else. Two people to hold and be held by.

Two sets of hands on him, two mouths on him, two sets of eyes watching him.

Fuck, he wants that. 

And maybe he can actually have it.

“Do you think he’d find it weird to share?” He doesn’t want to get too invested in the idea if there’s no chance of it happening. He really likes Jerome. He’s ecstatic that Jerome likes him back. He could get lost in him happily and never worry about Jeremiah ever again, but…

If he could have both…

“We’ll find out together, Brucie,” Jerome promises.

Then he pulls Bruce’s underwear down his hips.

x-x-x

Bruce is such a sweet thing, Jerome had known he would be. It hadn’t been hard to figure out that even with past girlfriends he likely hadn’t gone too far. Still, the reality of how easy it had been to turn him on and subsequently turn him into a mess was—well, Jerome was going to be thinking about that for a long while after Bruce has gone home for the night. 

Bruce’s soft hair and his soft hands and his soft, open, wanting mouth—

When he’d decided to start something he hadn’t expected it to go quite so far, but every moment that passed they’d spurred each other on further and further as if they were making up for lost time. Bruce was either really, _really_ into all the things spilling out of Jerome’s mouth or he had a short fuse. Maybe even both.

Christ. If Jerome didn’t have a huge soft spot for Bruce—if he didn’t start genuinely liking him as much as he does, if he didn’t have actual feelings to go along with his lust—he probably would be doing his best to keep Bruce awake right now instead of letting him sleep.

Once they had started smoking at Jerome’s place—which meant hanging out longer, which meant smoking more than they used to—Bruce tended to crash afterwards. It was as if all the tension steadily building up inside of him was sometimes the only thing keeping him awake and once that was finally dealt with he was free to rest. He had a temporary reprieve from the stresses of his life for a few hours once a week, and then he went back to being stressed again. 

Jerome’s going to help him relax more than once a week, now, and not just by smoking with him, and not just by fucking him. He wants to take Bruce out, have some fun, put a smile on his serious face. 

This is probably the most romantic he’s ever been.

Bruce is so cute; a modern-day Prince sleeping on a ratty couch, covered by an ugly blanket. Jerome has to fight back the urge to smother him in kisses, because it would be a tragedy to wake Bruce up when he’s obviously comfortable. He looks flushed, tousled, relaxed.

Well-fucked. 

He’ll look even better once he’s in Jerome’s bed. 

He shifts, pulling Bruce’s legs further onto his lap. They’d managed to slip his pants back on before Bruce went down for the count, but Jerome’s special souvenir of the day was bunched up in his own jean pocket. Bruce had been all soft, unmarked skin with slender limbs and ankles. Looking down at him had been an unsubtle reminder that Bruce was too good for someone like him. Too good for someone like Jeremiah, too. Probably too good for anyone, really. But Bruce liked him anyways. Wanted him anyways. 

Jerome isn’t a particularly humble guy to begin with, but this was definitely a boost to his sense of self-worth. It’s nice to have someone like you so much. Jerome’s had girlfriends and boyfriends before, but they’d all been like him—rough around the edges and a little bit mean. He hadn’t needed to be careful with them. He hadn’t wanted to be careful with them. They hadn’t been careful with him, either.

Bruce, though? Jerome could manage a little more care when it came to him. Even if he was stronger and sharper and more interesting than Jerome had first given him credit for, he was still surprisingly soft for someone who’d grown up in this mad city. Nice, too, in a way that Jerome had initially thought was being faked. He was naïve about a lot of things and was willing to look for the best in people even when there was little good to be found. He must have found something in Jerome that was enough to make him start liking him in more than a friendly way. Jerome wonders what it was. 

It’s nice to be wanted by someone so good, so out of your league, so precious.

Jerome kind of wants to spoil him. Bruce has undoubtedly been pampered his entire life, but not in the way that Jerome would indulge him. Not in the way that Jeremiah would likely indulge him, either. 

He had _things_ , sure; he had a lot of expensive, material objects. But anyone who’d spent more than a few hours in Bruce’s company would realize that _things_ weren’t what he was most interested in having. He wanted friends who genuinely liked him, and people who he could trust enough to sometimes vent to about his parents’ expectations, and someone who he could text for hours when he’d been dragged to an event and was surrounded by people who he didn’t actually want to talk to but had to hang around anyways because he wasn’t allowed to leave _because he was a Wayne and there were ‘responsibilities tied to his name’_. He wanted attention and affection and a level of understanding that seemed to be difficult for him to find.

They could both give that to him. They’d give him more, too, because he’d deserve it. 

Bruce had gone so delightfully red when Jerome had admitted that Jeremiah had caught a glimpse of them kissing, and any thoughts that inviting Jeremiah in to their arrangement might overwhelm Bruce in a bad way had been firmly swept aside. He wants to satisfy every fantasy that might weave its way inside of Bruce’s head, and he knows he’ll enjoy it.

And he knows Bruce would readily do the same for him.

They’d been dancing around each other for two months; Bruce too timid to make the first move after his fumble with Jeremiah, Jerome too bemused by the way Jeremiah and Bruce acted when they happened to cross paths to commit to anything, but that’s all out of the way, now.

He trails his fingers up and down Bruce’s calves. He wants to press kisses against Bruce’s closed eyelids. He wants to whisper sweet things to him as soon as he wakes back up. He sits still, perfectly content with the weight of Bruce’s legs in his lap, until Bruce finally begins to stir.

“What time is it,” he rasps as he rubs at his eyes. He was always a little hoarse after smoking. Jerome honestly isn’t sure if Bruce is such a golden-boy that his parents really have no idea that he smokes, or if they’re simply allowing him one normal vice to make up for all of the pressure that they constantly put him under in order to live up to the family name.

“Just after six.” Usually Bruce was well on his way by now. “Come on, sweetheart, I’ll drive you as far as your gate.”

“Sweetheart?” Bruce echoes, cheeks going preciously pink. He hadn’t flushed like this when Jerome called him baby or darlin’, but he’d had other things to flush about at the time, so maybe Jerome just hadn’t noticed. 

“Yeah.” Jerome doesn’t resist the urge to lean in and press a firm kiss against his mouth. “My pretty little sweetheart.” 

“I’m not pretty,” Bruce murmurs half-heartedly. “And I only seem little compared to you.”

Jerome chuckles. Kisses him again.

Bruce kisses back, winding his fingers through Jerome’s hair.

“You’re mine now, yeah?” Jerome asks. “If one of your school buddies tries to make out with you you’ll say you’re spoken for?”

“Of course!” Bruce seems affronted that Jerome would even think otherwise. “And will you—will you—”

“Yeah. You’re stuck with me, darlin’.”

“Good,” Bruce breathes against his mouth. His eyes are dark. His soft lips are parted. If they start making out again Jerome doesn’t know when they’ll be able to pull apart and then Bruce’s mother is going to call the police to have another amber alert issued.

The joy of being a rich kid in a city like Gotham; disappear for even an hour too long and people thought you’d gotten snatched right off of the street.

“C’mon, you’ve got to get home before your parents get antsy and decide to call people from your fake study group.” Jerome lets the blanket covering Bruce fall to the floor. 

“Jerome,” Bruce begins softly. “Are we… What are we?”

Undefinable, Jerome wants to say, because none of his boyfriends or girlfriends had ever made him feel the way that Bruce did. Also, he’d never thought about sharing any of his past partners with his brother. 

“I don’t know, Bruce,” he tells him. “Something special, though. Spectacular.”

Bruce smiles and reaches out to grab his hand. 

“I like that,” he says. “Spectacular sweethearts.” 

“Exactly.”

And then, once Jeremiah got with the program—because there was no way, absolutely no way that he’d say no. Jerome knew him way too well—they’d become something even better. 

x-x-x

Bruce’s soft mouth, his flushed face, his hands tangling in Jeremiah’s hair. Bruce’s legs spread open on either side of Jeremiah’s hips. Bruce grinding up against him, dark eyelashes fluttering as sweet little moans and cries fell from between his kiss-swollen lips. 

The way that Bruce had looked after kissing him, so happy that he was glowing with it. Jeremiah would make him that happy again. He’d be gentle and good. He’d give Bruce everything.

He bites his lip, cock jerking in his hand. He’d give and give and give, because Bruce was so sweet and deserved so much. Bruce would love it, would love everything that Jeremiah did to him. He’d bloom under Jeremiah’s attentions, gaze dreamy and soft as he looked up at him.

The way Bruce would call his name.

The way he would interlock their fingers as Jeremiah’s cock slid against him. The way his legs would tremble as Jeremiah slowly began to press inside of him. The way he would blush as Jeremiah lovingly praised him.

Bruce. Bruce. Bruce—

Jeremiah comes, fast and breathless. He’ll feel guilty about touching himself to thoughts of Bruce once he’s capable of rational thought again, but at the moment he doesn’t, so instead he basks in the afterglow. He’s warm, satiated, peaceful…

He wishes he weren’t alone, though.

He wishes he’d met Bruce before he got so caught up in Jerome’s orbit that Jeremiah didn’t stand a chance.

He shuts his eyes and tries to shake those thoughts away. Jerome deserved someone who would make him happy. Jerome deserved someone who would treat him kindly. Jerome deserved so much for what he’d gone through when they were kids; he’d made himself into an easier target to protect Jeremiah more than once. He’d learned very early that just because someone was supposed to love you didn’t mean that they wouldn’t hurt you. 

He’d been the best brother that he could be, considering the circumstances of their childhood, and although Jeremiah doesn’t really know how to express it he does love him.

That’s why he should back off. That’s why he should try and forget.

But it’s impossible.

He’s just going to have to live with his feelings and try not to be too obvious about it.

Jeremiah sighs, cleaning his filthy hand with tissue and throwing it into his wastebasket. 

He wonders if Bruce and Jerome are still kissing.

He wonders how far they’re going to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ❤

Bruce has been thinking about this for days. His attention has been so difficult to settle on his day-to-day activities that it had gotten to a point where his mother had asked him if he was getting sick and needed to stay home from school on Friday. He’d told her that he was fine with as much reassurance as he could manage, and in the same breath he’d mentioned that he’d be going out Friday evening.

And he had, maybe, insinuated that he might end up staying the night with a friend.

Because—

Because there’s a lot that Bruce wants to do, and Bruce would really, really like to touch Jerome and be touched by Jerome for more than a few hours, and he’d like to share more than just a few kisses. 

And if they added Jeremiah into the mix, even if the end result was just a little bit of making out and heavy petting through clothes…

Bruce shudders, feeling fluttery and hot as he steps up to the twins’ front door. He pulls the key out of its hiding place and lets himself in, locking the door behind him. He walks deeper into the house until he’s finally standing in front of Jerome’s bedroom, which he’s only been in for maybe a handful of minutes all together over the past few months. Normally he wouldn’t intrude on anyone’s space without them being there to give him permission, but Jerome had texted him just as Bruce was leaving school, telling him that Bruce could make himself comfortable in his room and sending him a smiley face that Bruce chose to assume represented lewd insinuations that he probably should not be charmed by but was none the less. 

He pushes the door open and he lets his backpack—packed with a tightly rolled pair of pajama pants, a second pair of underwear, a fresh shirt, and a few other things that Bruce had nervously wondered if he might need—fall to the floor. 

Jerome’s room surprisingly does not smell of weed—his containers were air tight, and he didn’t like smoking in his room—but the faint scent of cigarette smoke, so prominent and steeped into the walls and ceilings in a way that no amount of cleaning could completely get rid of it, lingers here, too.

It’s easy to ignore the smell, though, when Bruce lays himself out on Jerome’s somewhat rumpled bedsheets and inhales the scent of _him_ instead.

He spends time scrolling through his phone, knowing that sitting and waiting in complete silence would drive him crazy well before anyone came home. He listens very closely for any sign that he is no longer alone in the house; the front door closing, footsteps, the creak of the floorboards. It’s nearly an hour until he finally hears something, and he scrambles to put his phone away and sits on the edge of the bed—as if he’d been casually there the entire time instead of draping himself across Jerome’s bedsheets and pillows. His heart thunders as he hears footsteps come closer.

The door swings open and Jerome strolls inside with a grin that makes Bruce’s knees feel a little weak.

“Hi,” Bruce greets quickly, rising up from the bed. He meets Jerome halfway, reaching out to wrap his arms loosely around his shoulders. “I missed you,” he says, and it feels good to say it. It’s been literal months since he’d first had the thought that seeing Jerome once a week was not enough, even though he’d had no idea how to bargain for more time _or_ that he was able to request more time. 

“I missed you too, Bruce,” Jerome croons at him, wrapping his arms around Bruce’s back and leaning down for a quick kiss. “You hungry? I was gonna order takeout.”

Bruce feels too fluttery to eat right now, anticipation curling inside of him restlessly.

“Think you can wait a little while?”

Jerome leans back, raising his eyebrows. “I guess that depends on how long ‘a little while’ is. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

“I want—” His voice cracks and he flushes, but he attempts to boldly continue. “l want to—”

Kiss you. Hold you. Be held by you. Make out with you.

Suck your cock, his mind adds frantically, and that thought alone seems to make all the other words get caught in his throat. He’d been able to say it before, granted he was high at the time and basking in the afterglow, but it shouldn’t be so difficult to say it again even if mentioning it does seem like he’s going too fast. He doesn’t have to rush. Jerome wouldn’t want him to rush.

Thinking about it, though—even just thinking about the feeling of Jerome’s thumb in his mouth—seems to render him speechless. 

“What is it?” Jerome’s voice is soft in a way that it very rarely is. It makes Bruce feel like melting. “What do you want, darlin’?”

“I want—fuck.” Bruce burrows his burning face into the crook of Jerome’s neck, and Jerome laughs under his breath as his hands trace up and down Bruce’s back.

“You want me to do what I told you I would? Tease you, give you some hickies on the insides of your thighs,” Jerome drawls before adding, “go down on you.”

Bruce makes a garbled sound against him, thoughts stuttering.

“Not gonna lie, I was thinking about taking things a little bit slower with you since we rushed right into something last time. Not that I minded, obviously. You were—” He inhales heavily and Bruce burns.

He’d come in his pants to the feeling of Jerome pressed against him and the thought of their naked dicks touching. In the middle of the night he’s gotten off to memories of things Jerome had told him while sucking his own thumb into his mouth and wondering, wondering, wondering—

“—so sweet. Thought we could get a little more intimately acquainted with each other before we go rushing into anything completely new to you. Plus, I thought that Jeremiah would be home by now since his last class of the day is in one of the newer buildings nearby and he doesn’t go out, ever. I figured we’d be able to corner him over dinner and end the night with some cuddling.”

 _Corner him?_ Bruce’s lingering thoughts of what it would feel like to go even further with Jerome begin to scatter. 

“Jerome, you make it sound like we’re planning to attack him.”

“I’ll attack, you woo, it’ll all work out in the end.”

“ _Woo?_ ” Bruce repeats incredulously. “I thought he already—doesn’t he already like me?”

“Oh, he does. Trust me. The point, though, is that Jeremiah isn’t home. Probably would be better if we didn’t go too crazy, just in case he avoids us afterwards because he’s embarrassed that he overheard anything before he knows that we’re okay with it as long as he’s okay with it.”

“You might have a point.” Bruce shifts around restlessly. “We can kiss and make out on the couch, though, right? Since technically he’s already seen us do that?”

“Sure thing, darlin’. Do you want pizza or do you want Thai?”

x-x-x

As far as dates go, well, Jerome isn’t entirely sure if this technically classifies as one, but it still manages to outshine most of his actual dates. Funny, since it’s pretty much what he and Bruce have been doing every Tuesday for two months. Hang out on the couch, talk, eat, watch movies. The only differences are that they’re not passing a joint between them, and there’s a lot more kissing.

A lot. More. Kissing. 

Fuck, but Bruce is into kissing him. His hands flutter over Jerome’s cheeks and into his hair, across his shoulders and down his chest. They slip underneath Jerome’s shirt, perfectly trimmed nails skirting against him and making Jerome’s breath catch even though he’s been kissing like this since well before he and Jeremiah left their family behind. Sometimes when Bruce pulls back he looks to be on the cusp of asking for something, but he goes red and ducks back in again, making a muted, embarrassed sound against Jerome’s mouth. He’s so fucking adorable.

Jerome wants to know what’s gotten him so worked up, but…

Where the fuck was Jeremiah? He’d texted when his brother still hadn’t shown up half an hour after he’d made it home, because even if Jeremiah was an adult who could spend his time however he wanted Jerome was not kidding when he said that Jeremiah never went out after class. He’s pretty sure there’s only one person who Jeremiah even hangs around with, and she never struck Jerome as being particularly inclined to go out either. Homebodies attracted homebodies, or whatever.

He checks his phone for what feels like the dozenth time and sees that, finally, Jeremiah got around to messaging him back.

Working on a project, Jeremiah’s text says. Might not be home till late.

Well, if he’s not going to be home until later, anyway…

Jerome leans against Bruce, enjoying how he can get away with pushing into his space with Bruce’s reaction mainly being to tilt his head up and give Jerome a _look_ from underneath his eyelashes, waiting for a handful of seconds to see if Jerome is going to start kissing him before he decides to bridge the gap himself.

Jerome smacks a quick kiss to his cheek, chortling at the unintentionally cute way Bruce bats his eyelashes afterwards.

“Miah’s going to be late so it looks like we don’t have to worry about him overhearing us, getting flustered, and avoiding us after all.”

“Oh.” Bruce’s voice is already so breathy and soft, Jerome thinks he might actually adore him. “In that case…”

“In that case.” Jerome leans into him, watching Bruce try and gather himself. “Do you have something in particular that you’d like to do to pass the time?”

“Do you?” Bruce asks, voice high. 

“Oh, Brucie.” Jerome presses a lingering kiss to Bruce’s mouth. “Don’t you already know?”

Bruce’s hands dig into his hair. “When you said you wanted us to get more intimately acquainted before rushing into anything completely new, what exactly were you talking about? Because—because I want that, just tell me what it is, first.”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, we’ve got time.” And Jerome frankly wants to savour each new step that they take together instead of just rushing towards sex like it’s something that doesn’t hold any meaning for them. Bruce likes him, he likes Bruce, everything they do together should be special. “Would you rather go back to my room? Just forewarning you, as requested, that this may end with my hand down your pants.”

Bruce plants a swift kiss to his cheek. “We can—we can stay out here, I don’t mind. It feels… Rebellious, maybe, to do something private out here in the open, even if there’s no one around who could see us. Exciting, I guess. Is that weird?”

“Not at all.” How much of Bruce’s life was spent keeping personal things shut away? Probably too much. He wonders, brief and hot, if Bruce would like intimacy in unorthodox places if there were a chance that someone might find them if they didn’t keep quiet. It’s something to stew over and bring up later, when they’re more comfortable with each other. One of his hands skims up underneath the front of Bruce’s shirt, and he delights in the feeling of Bruce going tense under his hand. “I get it.”

They kiss again, and eventually Bruce starts tugging pointedly on Jerome’s shirt and he lets Bruce pull it off of him with a soft laugh. Bruce’s hands skim over his bare shoulders and forearms and chest, and Jerome slowly leans against him until Bruce turns, one leg tucked on the couch and one hanging off of it. They kiss and kiss, and Jerome undoes the zipper of Bruce’s jeans, and Bruce gasps against him mouth and drops his own hands to mimic Jerome’s intent.

He’s hard and hot and makes the cutest little noises when Jerome wraps his fingers around him. Bruce’s own hand is somewhat frantic, and Jerome has a fleeting moment where he wonders if Bruce is touching him how he touches himself and he feels the muscles in his stomach clench at the mental image that flashes in his mind for a split-second before fading away.

He draws his hand back and laves his tongue against his palm in a way that is maybe a little showy and again, Bruce copies him, starry-eyed and flushing before they both reach out to each other a second time. 

“You feel so good in my hand,” he croons against Bruce’s lips, loving the way the admission makes him shudder. Bruce’s slick, soft fingers feel like some kind of heaven. “Bet you’ll feel great in my mouth, once we get there.”

“Jerome,” Bruce gasps, hand gripping tighter and moving faster as he starts rocking up against Jerome’s palm. Jerome thrusts into his grip and wonders how close he is. “Jerome, can you—can I suck on your thumb again? I want—I want—”

Wordless, Jerome does as he asks and Bruce accepts the digit into his mouth eagerly, eyes clenching shut. He’s rocking up into Jerome’s hand and he’s stroking Jerome’s dick and he’s sucking his thumb deep into his mouth and moaning as if that alone would be able to excite him. He’s so sexy like this that Jerome almost can’t stand it. Jerome presses the pad of his thumb firmly against Bruce’s tongue and Bruce’s teeth skim against him as he starts to come.

“Oh, oh.” Bruce wraps his free hand around Jerome’s wrist. “Yes, yes, Jerome,” He slurs around Jerome’s thumb as he starts to shake, his hand on Jerome’s cock stills and moves to clench against his hip. “ _Jerome_.”

“That’s it, gorgeous,” Jerome plants a kiss against his forehead before planting his face into the crook of Bruce’s neck. His own hand is slick with Bruce’s come as he starts touching himself. He climaxes while sucking a hickey onto Bruce’s tender throat. 

Mine, he thinks in the moment, knowing that very, very soon the thought would morph into something different, but not worse.

Ours.

x-x-x

“You don’t understand, Ecco,” Jeremiah slurs as his closest friend—other than Jerome, who was the one person in his life that Jeremiah was closest to fully understanding and being fully understood by—folds him into the passenger seat of her car. “He is the most beautiful creature to have ever walked the earth. Ever. If I had never seen him with my own eyes,” he sighs, absolutely lovelorn, “I wouldn’t believe he exists.”

“You have mentioned something similar before, several times,” Ecco tells him dryly, watching him fumble with the seatbelt and waiting for it to click before adding, “But he’s fucking your brother.”

Jeremiah muffles an agonized screech against his palm. Ecco very stiltedly pats his shoulder afterwards in an awkward attempt at comfort.

“I don’t _know_ if they’ve fucked. I _do_ know that they were making out on the couch.” And he’s thought about it every night since he caught sight of them—wishing it was his hands touching, his mouth kissing, his dick that Bruce was desperately grinding up against—but even with alcohol loosening his tongue he manages to keep that information back. 

“Right. Never sit on that piece of furniture again, got it.”

“Ecco,” Jeremiah whines. “I love him.”

“Jeremiah. Haven’t you spent, like, less than an hour altogether talking to him?”

“It was an instantaneous event,” he tells her wistfully. “I saw him. And I knew.”

He kissed me and I knew, he adds silently. 

Ecco looks at his face for a long moment before she shuts the car door and makes her way to the driver’s side. “Okay,” she says as she starts the car and pulls into the road. “So you love him. Great. And your plan is to what, exactly?”

“To pine,” Jeremiah whispers in absolute agony. “Like a _fucking tree_.”

Ecco listens attentively as Jeremiah babbles for the entire ride to his place, waxing drunkenly and poetically about the boy who’d captured his interest so suddenly and completely when literally no one else had ever sparked any sort of fervent longing inside of Jeremiah’s heart. After a scintillating four minutes straight talking about how lovely Bruce’s eyelashes were, which had followed a six minute one-sided discussion about his gorgeous eyes, she finally puts the car into park and somehow manages to lead Jeremiah up his front doorstep and unlock the door for him.

“Ecco.” Jeremiah’s arms wrap around her suddenly. “You’re such a good friend. Thank you for listening to me talk at you for hours. I needed to get it off of my chest. I feel woozy, and utterly besotted, and also like I might throw up.”

“I will never let you have that much vodka again,” she promises him solemnly. “Drink plenty of water before bed.”

“I drank so much water already.” Jeremiah pulls away, pouting.

“Drink more. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“Didn’t I just—I just thanked you now?”

“You’ll thank me again.” She lays her hands on Jeremiah shoulders and looks directly into his hazy eyes. “Also, I’m really sorry that your first love isn’t working out for you. Maybe your second love will be better?”

“I will never love again,” Jeremiah tells her, straight-faced and utterly genuine. “Like a—like a swan. I can only love once. That’s it. He… _He’s_ it.”

“Right. Okay. Get some sleep, Jeremiah. The world will seem better in the morning.”

“Will it really?”

“Yes,” Ecco promises him before opening the door. “Now go. Rest. Try to stop thinking about heartbreak.”

“I will never stop thinking about heartbreak,” Jeremiah says, stumbling through his door and kicking off his shoes. “Goodnight, Ecco.”

He bypasses the kitchen, ignoring Ecco’s suggestion to drink more water, and he barely manages to take off his glasses, strip off his jacket, and remove his belt before he drops face first onto his bed without bothering to pull down the covers. 

He wakes up in the middle of the night, bladder full and mind spinning. He steps out of his room and manages to go about his business without turning on the bathroom light, which would undoubtedly be painful considering the sorry state he’s in. He even brushes his teeth, because he feels disgusting and has a very faint hope that that will somehow make him better. 

Fuck, he’s never drinking vodka ever again.

He shuffles towards the kitchen, praying that water would be enough to cure his alcohol-related woes. He opens the fridge, squinting against the light, and pours himself a glass before sitting down at the table, though instead of drinking he holds it up to his cheek. He feels overheated from sleeping in his heavy clothes, and when he gets back to his room he’s really going to have to change into his pajamas.

He groans at the idea of the amount of effort that will involve without him falling over and breaking something. His head settles against the table with a dull thud and he stays there as he allows himself to wallow in misery. 

He startles awake, disoriented and hot, a half an hour later. He drains the no-longer-cool glass of water. He strips out of his shirt and promises himself that he won’t forget it at the table. He gets up for more water. He opens the fridge door, pours his water, closes the door, drinks half, turns around.

He nearly drops the glass when he sees a shadowy figure standing in front of him.

He hisses out a frightened curse, voice low and rough from poor, alcohol-fueled slumber, and the figure jumps as if startled.

“Sorry,” a hauntingly familiar voice apologizes softly. “Sorry, I got up for the bathroom and I heard a noise as I was coming back.”

Bruce, Jeremiah’s mind whirls predictably. Bruce. Bruce here. Bruce here at night. Why is Bruce here—

Soft hands settle against his bare chest and Bruce leans up to press a kiss on his mouth.

Jeremiah freezes, heart thundering. His fingers clench around the glass in his hand. He feels something wet—Bruce’s tongue, Bruce’s tongue, Bruce’s tongue—slide over his lips. His mouth falls open in shock, the fingers of his free hand twitch.

Bruce’s tongue shyly, gently, slips past his lips.

Oh. Oh. _Ohhhh._

A dream, he thinks breathlessly, reaching up to touch a soft cheek. Is it a dream?

Bruce sighs against him; he sounds so happy, he feels so real—

—too real.

Oh. Oh no.

“Jeremiah!” He sputters, jumping back and lifting his hands in the air as if that would be enough to trick Bruce into thinking that Jeremiah hadn’t been touching him. Water splashes against him and splatters over the floor. “It’s Jeremiah! You’re kissing the wrong person.”

Again.

“Oh.” Bruce’s hands come up to rest against his own cheeks. Jeremiah can’t see very well without his glasses and without any light, but he’s sure that Bruce is blushing. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry Jeremiah.”

“It’s okay. Totally okay, we can forget it ever happened,” he lies unsteadily. “It’s dark, and you’re—you’re here. You’re here,” his voice becomes softer, he’s vaguely aware that Bruce is still talking to him.

“—so sorry. We haven’t even asked you yet—”

“If you’re here…” Oh no. Oh no. “If you’re here…”

“I hope you can forgive me for—for forcing myself on you a _second time_ , oh, fuck, Jeremiah—”

“It’s not even Tuesday and you’re sleeping over—”

“—you must hate me,” Bruce finishes, anguished, and Jeremiah’s attention snaps onto him.

“Excuse—hate you? Bruce, I could never hate you, I lo—” The words catch in his throat, splintering into an unsteady coughing fit. “Bruce. I, uh, I—” 

The kitchen lights flick on. Jeremiah immediately brings a hand up to his face to shield his eyes from the light. The glass slips from his fingers and shatters against the tile floor.

Jerome, looking distinctly ruffled, stares at them. His gaze drifts from Jeremiah’s hot face, over to Bruce—

Jeremiah looks at Bruce too, and yes, he is blushing, and yes, he is adorable, and yes, Jeremiah wants him more than ever. And he’s only wearing a pair of pajama pants. And he’s got a hickey on his neck. And Jeremiah wishes that he were the one who’d put it there.

Jeremiah averts his eyes quickly.

“Got to go. Goodnight. See you later,” he bids, intent on getting back to the safety of his room as soon as possible before he does or says something that he’ll live to regret. “I’ll clean the glass in the morning. Just, uh, don’t step in here until then.”

“Miah,” Jerome calls.

“Jeremiah,” Bruce—

Bruce… Calls?

He stops and turns, feeling unbalanced and out of breath.

“Yes?” He draws the question out. “Do you, uh, need something? From me?”

His heart, his social insurance number, his secret blueprints, his everlasting adoration?

“Could we talk to you about something?” Bruce’s face is so… Pretty and pink. Bright. Glowing. Jeremiah feels as though he suddenly realizes why moths are attracted to light even though it often ends so badly for them. 

“Miah,” Jerome’s voice interrupts his staring. He sounds amused. “How much did you have to drink last night?”

“Uhh.” How much? What kind of question was that. “A lot?” He hazards. 

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk to you in the morning.”

Bruce leans against Jerome and whispers something in his ear. When he’s done he strides quickly to Jeremiah, who can only watch him come closer and freeze at the sight of him. If Bruce had feelings for literally anyone else, if it was anyone but Jerome that he was fond of, Jeremiah would be stealing him away, figuratively—but maybe also literally, who could say for certain what they would and wouldn’t do for love—right now. But Bruce likes Jerome, so Jeremiah has to force himself into stillness, because if he doesn’t—

“Goodnight, Jeremiah,” Bruce whispers, and then he—

Leans up on his toes to press a kiss to Jeremiah’s cheek.

Jeremiah’s fingers twitch. It takes all of the self-control that he possesses to not reach out, dig a hand into Bruce’s hair, and—

“Night Miah,” Jerome calls. “Don’t worry about the glass. You’ll stumble into it if you try and clean it up now and it’s too early for anyone to be playing nurse.”

“Right.”

What the fuck is going on?

“Will this all make sense in the morning,” he asks under his breath as he rushes to his room, one hand pressed over his warm cheek.

Bruce kissing him, Bruce kissing him, Bruce kissing him—

He hopes it all makes sense in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

When Jeremiah wakes up it is too bright out, and he smothers his face into a pillow for a full thirty seconds before the tangle of his midnight memories begins to unravel and he’s left choking on bewilderment. Bruce in their house after dark. In only pajamas pants. With a hickey on his neck. Bruce, who had kissed him because he’d thought that Jeremiah was Jerome _a second time_. Bruce, who had kissed his cheek even after he knew that Jeremiah was Jeremiah.

He presses a hand to the cheek that Bruce’s lips had brushed against and flips onto his back, staring, unseeing, up at the ceiling of his room.

Bruce kissing him, Bruce kissing him, Bruce kissing him—

Bruce and Jerome wanting to talk to him about something.

If it weren’t for the kiss to the cheek, which Jerome had done absolutely nothing to put a stop to and didn’t seem particularly bothered by, Jeremiah would assume the worst. He’d been found out. His feelings had been too obvious even if he really was trying to hide them. He was making them both uncomfortable and he needed to cease and desist or else Bruce would stop coming over and then Jeremiah _would never see him again._

But the kiss, the kiss, the kiss.

It bewilders him and makes him feel fluttery and leaves him somewhat awestruck as he climbs out of bed, still in yesterday’s pants and belatedly realizing that he’d left his shirt at the kitchen table after all.

He stumbles towards the kitchen, mind buzzing even louder when he hears hushed conversation. He goes still as the interior of the kitchen comes into view. Jerome and Bruce are sitting at the table, heads intimately dipped towards each other, eyes locked. He stares at them for a few moments before Jerome glances up and catches sight of him, and then Bruce does the same, and—

Well, Jerome smirks at him, not unusual.

But Bruce. Bruce smiles. At him. And pulls a chair closer towards himself and pats the seat of it in an obvious invitation that Jeremiah could not possibly ever refuse. He stumbles forward and feels even more fluttery as he sits.

He licks his lips, fingers folding together restlessly, and tries to look calmer than he feels.

“You wanted to talk to me?”

“Do you want something to eat first?” Bruce asks kindly, as if Jeremiah could think about food at a time like this. He shakes his head and stares at Bruce maybe a little too intently, because eventually an arm creeps around Bruce’s shoulders and Jerome enters into his field of vision with a knowing look.

A knowing look. But he’s not telling Jeremiah to get lost.

“I’ll keep this short and to the point,” Jerome tells him, leaning against Bruce and pressing a kiss to his temple in a way that makes Jeremiah fervently _wish_ that he could do the same. “I know what happened the first time that you and Bruce crossed paths—”

“ _How?_ ” Bruce wouldn’t have told, and he’d promised Bruce that he wouldn’t tell.

“You told me _all about it_ when you got drunk after midterms, Miah,” Jerome tells him calmly. Too calmly. What the fuck was going on here? “And you have been the opposite of subtle, in case you were wondering, but that’s okay. I like Bruce. You like Bruce. Bruce likes us both. Wanna share?”

Jeremiah’s breath catches. He stares at Jerome, waiting for some sort of joke to be sprung upon him. When that doesn’t happen his gaze quickly fixates on Bruce, who hasn’t elbowed Jerome in the side or slapped him over the head or yelled at him for saying something so ridiculous. He is instead looking back at Jeremiah with a gentle expression, as if patiently waiting for him to answer Jerome’s question. 

Was this… Real?

Jeremiah very subtly pinches himself underneath the table.

He doesn’t wake up.

This was _real?!_

“Is that something—” Bruce’s face is beginning to flush, splashes of pink staining his cheeks sweetly. Jeremiah wants to look at him forever. Jeremiah _can_ look at him forever. “—that you’d be interested in?” He finishes unsteadily, eyes darting down to look at his hands.

“Yes,” he rasps. “Yes. I—Can we start now?”

Bruce’s eyes lift back up, a small smile is making its way across his lips. He’s happy. Jeremiah is making him happy. Jeremiah’s breath catches in his throat a second time in the span of one minute and hot, unmistakable want floods him. “If you want to. But if you need time—”

Jeremiah springs forward to the edge of his chair.

Time. Who needed time? Jeremiah has been wanting this for months, he’s had more than enough time without Bruce.

Jeremiah initiates the kiss this time around and it’s good, it’s so good. Wet and somewhat sloppy because Jeremiah’s too excited to even try to seem more experienced than he is but Bruce doesn’t appear to mind. Jeremiah doesn’t really know what to do with his hands except try to touch Bruce everywhere. A hand drifts up the back of Bruce’s neck and he feels fingers—Jerome’s fingers—already calmly petting through Bruce’s hair so instead he focuses on bringing Bruce closer, closer, but nothing seems to be quite close enough. He doesn’t know if he has the upper body strength required to pull Bruce out of his chair and into his lap—in his lap, in his lap, so pretty and perfect perched on top of him; bare, blushing, beautiful, _full_ —and he’s not even sure that their second-hand chairs would be able to stand their combined weight if he threw a thigh over Bruce’s legs and sat astride him instead. Thinking about it, though, spurs him on even more, and the moment that Bruce’s lips part enough for his tongue to slip in he’s licking the inside of his mouth and praying to Gods that he doesn’t even believe in that Bruce likes it as much as he likes it.

He is, very distantly, aware of Jerome saying something along the lines of ‘woah, didn’t know you had it in you’, but he’s much, much more preoccupied with Bruce. 

Bruce, making cute little noises against his mouth. Bruce, kissing him back. Bruce, winding his hands into Jeremiah’s hair. Bruce, who Jeremiah is pretty sure he would commit crimes for if it meant that Bruce would smile at him.

Who could say what they would and wouldn’t do for love? Certainly not Jeremiah, who’s so swept up by the feeling of Bruce kissing him that he’s getting hard. 

He pulls back, wondering if his expression is as awestruck as he feels, just so he can look at Bruce’s face. Bright eyes, blown pupils, kiss-bruised lips. His hair is a little messy and it looks so soft that Jeremiah wants to dig his hands into it and mess it up more, and Jerome is still touching Bruce but Jeremiah doesn’t mind—there was one person in the world who he couldn’t be angry at for touching Bruce, and Jerome apparently hadn’t been angry at Jeremiah for wanting to touch Bruce, too—and Jeremiah feels like he’s spiralling on a crash course and he’s eager for collision.

“I want to make you feel good, Bruce.” He does, he does. He wants it so badly. He’s wanted it ever since Bruce kissed him the first time. Sometimes, when he’s alone, it’s all that he can think about. “Can I make you feel good?”

“You—you’re already making me feel good?” Bruce offers, unassumingly charming. 

Jerome attempts to stifle a laugh. 

Jeremiah groans and leans into him again, Bruce makes a surprised sound against his mouth and Jeremiah _loves him_.

“I think what Miah means is that he wants to touch your dick without anything in the way.”

Fuck, Bruce’s dick, Jeremiah hasn’t even _touched him there yet_ even with pajamas pants in the way. His palm comes down against him—he’s getting hard, getting hard, Jeremiah is making him hard—and Bruce squeaks and jerks, arms wrapping tighter around Jeremiah.

Jeremiah can’t look away from his face as he pets him through the silky material. He’s so close that he can feel Bruce’s exhalations puff against his mouth. He wonders how much attention it would take for precum to start soaking through to dampen his hand. He physically aches just from thinking about it.

“I was going to make a fun little Saturday afternoon date plan for us all since you stayed over,” Jerome whispers in Bruce’s ear. “Figured we’d take you out properly for at least an hour or two, since I know your parents won’t let you spend the whole day away, but I can map that out on my own if you two need some privacy.” He laughs under his breath and presses another kiss to Bruce’s temple.

“You—uh, haa.” Bruce shudders, eyelashes fluttering so pretty against his cheeks when Jeremiah rocks his palm against him. “Hnn—wouldn’t mind?” 

Bruce and Jerome share a silent look—Jeremiah wants to know Bruce well enough that they can communicate without words, too—apparently to decide whether or not Jerome was needed to act as some sort of sexual mediator. Jeremiah oddly doesn’t find he particularly cares one way or the other, which is probably not entirely normal but he’s been kissing Bruce and Bruce has been kissing him back because Jerome is the best brother ever, so who cares? While Jerome and Bruce are communicating without words he drags his lips down Bruce’s neck to suck a mark onto the other side of it.

“ _Ah._ ” Soft, quiet, lovely. Jeremiah sucks harder and Bruce’s hands dig into his hair, pulling him closer.

Closer, closer, closer—

“Miah, if you climb on top of him you’re just going to break the chair.”

If the chair breaks and Jeremiah ends up sprawled over him on the kitchen floor he’s probably not going to be able to pull away and he’ll just end up grinding against Bruce until they come.

—Bruce coming, Bruce coming, Bruce coming because of Jeremiah. Would Jerome keep petting Bruce’s hair through it all? Would Jerome tell Jeremiah what Bruce liked best so that Jeremiah could give it to him; so, so, so eager and so, so, so _hard_ —

“Bruce,” he utters the name between kisses, breathless and adoring. “I want to touch you more. Just—just a little more.” He thinks he’d spontaneously combust from anything more than their hands around each other. Even the thought of that leaves him a shuddering mess. “Can I take you to bed?”

He’d be so good, so attentive, he’d give Bruce everything that he wanted.

“Yes.”

Jeremiah is out of his chair in a split second—feeling so full of compulsive excitement that he wonders if he could carry Bruce in his arms to his bed, to his bed, _to his bed_ —and while his mind snags on that for a few precious seconds Bruce twists in his chair to give Jerome a kiss, which Jerome returns happily, sighing into Bruce’s mouth like he wishes he could live upon his lips.

“Have fun,” Jerome says as to Bruce as they pull apart, resting a hand against his cheek tenderly and smiling softly when Bruce leans into his touch. The look he sends Jeremiah afterwards is just another little sign that Jeremiah has been given the green light. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he throws Jeremiah’s way with a somewhat sly wink.

—how far had they gone, how far had they gone, how far had they gone—

—Bruce’s legs spread open on either side of him, grinding up against him—

Jeremiah can’t seem to form words, and this feels like a very weird time to be saying ‘thank you’ to anyone, so he just nods and reaches out for Bruce again, unable to stop kissing him even as he starts backtracking towards his bedroom.

Jerome’s fond laughter echoes behind them.

Best brother ever.

x-x-x

“Oh my god, oh my god.”

Bruce had thought that _Jerome_ was almost too much for him to handle at times but Jeremiah was a whole different kind of almost too much. Maybe because Jerome was capable of at least a little self-control while Jeremiah either couldn’t hold himself back or was too swept up by the situation and how long he’d been wanting this while thinking he could never have it to even make an attempt at it. As soon as he’d gotten Bruce settled into bed he had tugged off his pajama pants and his hand had wrapped around Bruce’s cock and hadn’t stopped stroking him since. 

Bruce thrusts into his fist and Jeremiah reacts as if Bruce has wrapped a hand around his own dick, shuddering and kissing Bruce harder like he can’t get enough. It makes Bruce’s thoughts skitter and his fingers twitch against Jeremiah’s shoulders. He’s barely capable of any rational thought at the moment but the coherent pieces he’s able to stitch together are feverish musings of how Jeremiah would react if Bruce stopped kissing him in order to bring Jeremiah’s other hand up to his mouth to suck on a few of his fingers.

Fuck, he wants to know how Jeremiah would respond if he told him he wanted to suck his cock. 

“I lo—like you so much Bruce. So much. I know we haven’t—haven’t spent much time together but I hope that changes now.”

“Of course,” Bruce promises between frantic, wet kisses. “Of course.”

Jerome might say that they were undefinable, and the notion of being _spectacular sweethearts_ is just so incredibly sweet that it makes Bruce’s teeth ache, but Bruce has also decided to mentally refer to them both as his boyfriends, too. 

Bruce gets _two_ boyfriends. 

Two. Boyfriends. 

And now that he has at least an idea of what they’re like when they’re with him separately he thinks he might actually dissolve into a puddle once they eventually reach the point where they both pay attention to him at the same time. Jerome is all smouldering heat, a swift but steady build up, teasing, and words that seem to be specifically calculated to drive Bruce even crazier with want; Jeremiah is an uncontrollable detonation that Bruce is immediately swept away by, left stunned and breathless in the wake of him.

Jeremiah settles against him, the hard line of his cock pressing against Bruce, and Bruce needs, needs, needs to feel him.

He reaches down to wrap a hand around Jeremiah’s cock. It twitches against his palm and Jeremiah thrusts against him hard, hard enough that the entire bedframe shakes and rocks with the motion. Bruce’s thoughts are suddenly awash with the idea of what it would feel like if Jeremiah were fucking into him with the same force.

“Bruce,” he pants, his hand on Bruce starts working even faster and Bruce can feel his toes start to curl as the wave of heat inside of him begins to crest. “Bruce, Bruce. Touch me, please touch me.”

“I will, I will,” he says, pressing fleeting kisses to Jeremiah’s face. He twists his wrist and if anything Jeremiah starts fucking into the circle of his hand even harder and Bruce can hardly move, he’s so overwhelmed by it all. “I’m going to—I’m gonna—ah, god, Jeremiah.” He wraps his legs around Jeremiah’s hips and his arms around his shoulders, grinding up against him, too desperate to do anything else. “You’re making me feel so good, so good, don’t stop, please. I promise I’ll touch you mo—more ah, ahh—after. Fuck, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, _Jeremiah_ —”

He starts to come just as Jeremiah’s hand leaves his cock so that Jeremiah can brace himself against the bed and fuck against Bruce harder, his cock sliding alongside Bruce’s, his hips driving Bruce into the bed. Bruce tucks his face into the crook of Jeremiah’s neck and babbles his name endlessly, rocking up against him until it feels like too much, and then—

—he feels another rush of wet heat against him and Jeremiah groans, the slide of his dick even slicker as one of his hands digs between Bruce and the bed to settle on the small of his back in a way that feels almost possessive, almost like Jerome’s touches. Jeremiah kisses him even more as he rides out his orgasm, his tongue sliding into Bruce’s mouth and gliding restlessly against his teeth, and the force behind his rocking slowly begins to lessen.

“Going to make you feel good whenever you want, Bruce,” he vows lowly. “However you want. I feel good when I make you feel good. I’m so—I’m so happy that you like me, too, Bruce. You’ve made me so happy.”

Bruce, breathless and limp beneath him—feeling like he’d just taken a hit of something spectacularly strong, he’s so relaxed—thinks, holy shit. 

Jeremiah was just a wild as Jerome after all, just in a different way and far better concealed. 

“I’m happy too,” he manages, dazed, and Jeremiah makes a strange, high little whine that Bruce is sure he’s going to think about a lot, later, and then leans in to kiss him again.

Bruce’s hands come up to cup his face and he slowly takes charge, softly lapping against Jeremiah’s lips, gently nipping at him in a way similar to the first ever kiss that they’d shared. Slow. Lingering. Letting Jeremiah get a feel for what kissing could be like when it wasn’t just desperation and desire driving it, but something tender and sweet, too.

Overtop of him Jeremiah melts.

x-x-x

Jerome eventually stifles his laughter once Jeremiah and Bruce are out of sight.

He figures that Jeremiah’s got literal months of unresolved tension to get out, too, so it’s better to let him have some privacy during his and Bruce’s first time together. Fair’s fair, after all, and Jerome has had the opportunity for time alone with Bruce before. Not that he wants to start some sort of ongoing tally as if Bruce is just a toy that they’re sharing, but he thinks they’ll both appreciate having an opportunity to _get to know each other_ without worrying about Jerome observing their first intimate moments from the sidelines. 

Plus Jerome is kind of curious to see how flustered and disheveled Bruce is when they step out of Jeremiah’s room. He has an idea, of course, because he’s seen what Bruce looks like in the aftermath of himself, but he wants to know if there will be any differences. He kind of wants to know how wild Bruce would look if Jerome paid him attention immediately afterwards when he was already prettily rumpled, swollen-mouthed, and flushed from Jeremiah. He kind of wants to know how Bruce will look when he’s caught up between them, being plied by their affectionate attention at the same time. 

He kind of wants to see how _overwhelmed_ and _overstimulated_ they can make him.

The thought makes the first stirrings of heat curl inside of him, but he dismisses it for the moment. No point getting too excited when he had planning to do and a date to go on.

He puts in headphones—the walls in here were thin, and if he hears what’s going on in Jeremiah’s bedroom he is absolutely not going to be able to concentrate—and scrolls through his phone to check out if there’s anything fun happening at the boardwalk of Amusement Mile for the weekend; making messy mental notes about what he wants them to do. Bruce had previously told him that he didn’t have a lot of time for leisurely pursuits once he’d entered into his teenaged years and his grooming to eventually run Wayne Enterprises had begun.

Jerome and Jeremiah are going to change that.

Jerome and Jeremiah are going to let him kick back and relax and have _fun_ with them.

And they’re going to make him forget, at least for a little while, just how much stress the expectations that came with his family name gave him.

He has a solid outline in his head by the time he sees movement at the edges of his vision. He looks up, and—

There they are.

It’s quicker than he thought it would be, but, then again, he is almost absolutely certain that Jeremiah has never, _never_ , wanted anyone the way that he wants Bruce, and he’d never been particularly interested in people in any sort of romantic sense. Jerome hadn’t ever asked, because Jerome hadn’t particularly cared to know, but now that this is happening he can’t help but wonder if Bruce was actually Jeremiah’s _first kiss,_ which means that Bruce is going to be Jeremiah’s _first everything._

They both look somewhat overwhelmed; starry-eyed and dishevelled in a way that makes Jerome feel fond. Jeremiah, standing directly behind Bruce, has his arms wrapped around him and he keeps laying soft little kisses into Bruce’s hair like he can’t get enough of the casual intimacy of it.

Months of buildup, Jerome reminds himself.

Jeremiah was going to be so touchy. Jeremiah was probably going to keep being touchy. Bruce looks like he’s enjoying it, though. Jerome remembers one particular phrase of Jeremiah’s drunken ramblings about their kiss, ‘he looked so happy that he was glowing’.

Bruce looks like he’s glowing now, and Jerome is just as weak to the pull of him as Jeremiah is, so he gets out of his chair and comes towards him, and his hands settle on either side of Bruce’s face.

He kisses Bruce, and it feels like a return to where he is meant to be, like coming home.

He wonders if this is what love feels like.

“Figured we’d go up to the boardwalk, if that’s okay with you,” he says as he pulls back, laying a palm against Bruce’s warm face. 

“It’ll be colder by the water. I only brought a light jacket with me.”

“You can borrow one of mine or Jeremiah’s,” Jerome offers, knowing his brother wouldn’t have any protests. If anything, the thought of Bruce in their clothes was… Really hot. “I could lend you a hoodie, too. Don’t want you getting sick on our first official date.”

“Okay. I’m uh—I’m going to have to shower, first.” Bruce admits softly.

“Yeah.” Jerome drops his hand down to lightly scratch over the skin of Bruce’s abdomen. They’d obviously made an attempt to wipe it up, but he’s still got a few dried patches of come on him.

Seeing it kind of makes Jerome want to offer to help him out in the shower, just to get his hands all over him and come on him and wash it off in one go.

Fuck.

Later, he tells himself firmly. Date first, other stuff later.

They had time. They had plenty of time, now that they’d all come to an understanding. 

“You’ll have to have the water running for a full minute before it’s anything close to bearable, so don’t slip in right away. My towel’s the red one.” He winks. “Feel free to use it.”

Bruce leans in and kisses him again, still wrapped up in Jeremiah’s arms. 

We’re going to be so good to you, Jerome thinks as he deepens the kiss, taking Bruce’s face in his hands and moving closer towards him, Bruce solidly pinned between him and Jeremiah. 

We’re going to be so good for you. You’re going to be so good for us. 

He’s never been more sure about anything.


End file.
